Factfulness is an important book that opens our eyes to how our views of the world have been skewed, if not corrupted, by poor thinking skills and various groups, including the media, that focus on the negative and often inappropriately generalize small issues into seeming huge problems. The reality, as well documented in this book, is that the world is getting better, often way better – which is surprising when we are buried in negativity all day, every day.
Interesting example of yellow journalism as a local TV station exaggerates the story of a Delta flight losing cabin pressure and descending to a lower altitude. A “controlled descent” is converted by the local TV news report into “plunges” – because click bait, etc. Updated with a link to a video by an airline pilot explaining what actually went on (hint – not a “plunge”)
The illustration graphic is false, although you might believe it is true because most of the news media reported this topic, as illustrated in the graphic.
The reported information, however, is 100% false and is readily shown as false by a simple example (click through to read why its false). This incorrect information was widely reported and established as a fact. This occurred either because reporters had no understanding of what they report on (far too often to be the case) or because they deliberately misled their readers and viewers.
Reporter and their layers and layers of fact checkers, misquotes a Kaiser Family Foundation study by a factor of 1,000 – changing MILLIONS to BILLIONS. The only appropriate word for this is idiocy.
There are many news reports about a growing “epidemic” of transgender murders in the United States. However, the data show a nearly constant trend line from 2015 to 2019. Further, the transgender murder rate, based on the data, is 1/4th to 1/2 that of the overall U.S. population. (It is possible that the underlying data is poor, which the Human Rights Campaign hypothesizes – but news reports calling out an epidemic in the absence of data to support that are not even pseudo news reporting – they are creative fiction writing.)
All murders are wrong, period. Violence and hate are wrong, period.
This post is about news reporting, not the transgender community.